


So May the Sunrise

by lookninjas



Series: Children's Work [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cults, End-of-the-World Theology, Gen, Militia Movement, Religious Abuse, Religious Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 08:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7426984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookninjas/pseuds/lookninjas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow, Ben slips through her fingers without her ever feeling the loss, the way he trickles away, piece by piece.  Without her even knowing it, he's been stolen from her bit by bit, until there's nothing left of him except his raised hand, his smile, and a hole in her heart in the shape of her son.  It will take thirteen very long years for him to finally make his way back home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Last Snake That Lived in the Creekbed

Somehow, Ben slips through her fingers without her ever feeling the loss, the way he trickles away, piece by piece. Days he spends holed up in his room, nights he doesn't come home for dinner but stays on campus for a meeting, for a lecture, to study with friends. Summer programs. He says he wants to board for his sophomore year and it's almost a relief. Leia's not home much anyway, and Han… 

Well.

But Han will come back, probably sooner rather than later. Last year was hard, with the pressure and the press and everything they gave up (for nothing, and how that stings even now, all those sacrifices they made only to fall short, only to  _ lose _ ), but when he’s had some space and time to himself, he’ll come home. And until then, it just seems better to have Ben at Cranbrook. It's a good school, a safe place, and Luke is there. He has his friends. He has his teachers. He can rest, and study, and enjoy himself, and at the end of the year, hopefully, come home to the family he remembers. To the life he remembers. Without ever knowing how close Leia and Han came to losing it all.

But Ben never comes home. He never even makes it to the end of the school year. 

There's an eleven-day hike in March through the Smoky mountains; all the sophomores do it. Ben's been planning for months, almost driving Leia crazy with everything he needs to have, all the gear that is absolutely required. She sees him off with a hug and a kiss; the last thing she sees of him is his smile and his raised hand.

By the time Cranbrook calls looking for him, he's been gone two days.

Somehow, without her even knowing it, he's been stolen from her bit by bit, until there's nothing left of him except his raised hand, his smile, and a hole in her heart in the shape of her son.

  
  


*

  
  


5 a.m. is the hardest hour of the day.

Ben was an early riser, if not quite a raging insomniac like Leia herself (although it’s been getting worse, hasn’t it, since he turned thirteen, since he started Cranbrook, and she meant to bring it up with the doctor a thousand times but he’s been so prickly and she didn’t want to push his tolerance to its breaking point by butting in where she wasn’t wanted, hovering and nagging and --), and 5 a.m. was always their time. Before Han was awake, before work pulled Leia away, before the waking world interfered, Leia would sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a stack of papers, and Ben would sit next to her. Sometimes, if it felt right, she would wrap an arm around him, rub his back or drag her fingers through his thick, dark hair. Sometimes, if he was tired, he would rest his head on her shoulder. They barely spoke beyond greeting each other; words were never the point. The point was belonging only to each other, if only for an hour or so every morning.

He’s been at Cranbrook nearly every morning since fall term began. Leia had thought she was used to spending her 5 a.m.s alone. 

She was wrong. Ever since he vanished, each morning has gotten progressively worse. The empty space next to her where his chair should be aches like a phantom limb. If she didn’t have so much to do, she’d finally start taking those pills her doctor keeps offering her. 

But she can’t afford to close her eyes for too long right now. The state police are tracking down false lead after false lead, venturing into Ohio and Indiana and even all the way down to Florida, finding nothing. Brendol’s in the Upper Peninsula, some abandoned mining town. Luke has talked to every parent, every teacher, every student he can who might know something; even Poe, who’s yet to start his junior year of undergrad, has been deputized as public relations. Leia coordinates; it’s what she’s good at, putting information together, finding patterns, making it fit. Shara always said she’d be a hell of a detective, if she ever chose to start chasing criminals instead of defending them.

But there’s nothing to put together at 5 a.m., months after Ben and Hux were stolen by Snoke. There’s no pattern, no information, nothing but guesswork and false hopes and the aching place where Ben should be, his head on her shoulder, his heavy weight leaning against hers.

For an hour, she suffers, and aches, and wonders whether or not it’s too late to take up prayer. 

And then, like the sun rising, there’s Han's number on her caller ID and her heart racing from something that isn't caffeine and the desperation in her own voice when she says, "Please, please, tell me you've found him."

"He called me," Han says, and Leia crumples and covers her face with her hand because the relief is so strong it's stolen all the strength from her body. She isn’t crying; she thinks she’s forgotten how. But she might, if she could remember where to start. "He's out, Leia. He ran away. Sometime last night or very early this morning. He wouldn't tell me where he was headed, and I'm not dumb enough to ask, but I told him where he could find a friend of mine, if he wanted to. I'm going to try to slip her some money before he gets there; I'll probably have to --"

"You still have access to the savings," Leia says, and is suddenly obscenely grateful for holding on to the marriage as long as she has. Holding on to hope, even when it seemed lost. "Give him as much as you think he'll take. Is he -- How did he sound? Did he say anything about Snoke or Hux or --"

"Not much, but he was scared as shit." Funny how the relief still doesn't leave Han's voice. Funny how much easier it still is for Leia to breathe. "He -- Look, I never told you this, all right? He didn't run alone. It wasn’t Hux; one of the First Order kids, a little girl about five. He said her parents weren't going to get her out of there, so he had to do it himself. Whatever Snoke's done to him, Leia, I don't think Ben would just kidnap a kid unless he thought he was saving her from something worse. Something bad is about to happen. Soon."

Leia thinks, absurdly, of Poe Dameron. Sitting shiva for his mom, only eight years old and so lost in the world, and Ben in his dark suit sitting next to him, his pale face and his black hair neatly combed back behind his ears.

_ This is where God wants me. This is where I need to be. _

Poe was only eight, but Ben was all of four. He spent a week taking care of Poe as tenderly as a mother would, sitting with him and bringing him tissues and reading to him at night. He shouldn't have been able to do it. If nothing else, he shouldn't have had the attention span. 

He was four, then. He's fifteen now.

If he really feels called to protect this girl, there's nothing that will pull her from his grasp.

"Leia? Are you listening?"

"I'm listening. I'm listening." By all accounts, Ben went with Snoke willingly enough. They’d been unusually close since Ben’s first year at Cranbrook. He’d gone to him for advice countless times. For Ben to suddenly change his mind and run now, things would have to have gotten very, very bad. 

And even if Ben's out, Hux is still there. 

"You don't know where he's headed. Do you have any idea where he's coming from, or where he is now, or even which state --"

"He's still in Michigan." Han says it reluctantly, but he says it. "Leia, I don’t think they ever left. And I don’t think they’re in the UP, either; he said he was on 127, headed north. West side of the state's my guess. Maybe four, five hours south of Gaylord."

Leia reaches out for the stack of well-worn maps on her kitchen table, highlighters and pens rolling off and scattering on the floor as she pulls the maps closer. West side, four or five hours south of Gaylord. Could be Lenawee County. It’s conservative, anyway. Some militia presence. Plutt, that man whose name keeps coming up; his parents have property out by Concrete City. It could be. It could be. 

"I'll pass it on," she says. Brendol won't be sleeping any more than she is. This could very well be the moment they've been staying awake for. "We'll find him, Han. We'll stop him. We'll bring Ben home."

"We will," Han says, and it's a promise. "If I hear from him again, you'll be the first to know."

"Thank you," she says, and doesn't bother reciprocating the sentiment. If Ben calls either of them, it'll be Han. He knows where Han is going to be. Knows that Han will answer.

Leia might hate herself for that sometime down the road but right now she's got work to do.

"If we make any progress," she says instead, "I'll tell you what I can, as soon as I can. I promise."

"That's all I ask for." 

Leia should hang up, she knows, but there's something about having Han on the phone with her. Something comforting. She misses him. She wouldn't see him even if he hadn't moved out; she's in her office sixteen hours a day, on the phone, trying her damndest to make an actual federal case out of her son's disappearance. The funny thing is, it's starting to work.

With this, she might just win.

"Out of curiosity?" Han asks. "When's the last time you slept?"

He used to ask her that, late nights when she was busy with a case, going over witness statements and expert testimony and all kinds of forensics she barely understood, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee well past midnight. It always coaxed her to bed, then.

Now, she stiffens. He doesn't get to ask her that. Not anymore.

"I'll sleep when he's home," she says, and reaches for her coffee. She's too fuzzy; she needs to be sharp. Snoke's been ahead of her every step of the way; she can't fall further back now. "Call me if you hear anything else."

And then she hangs up, takes a long swig of her coffee, and starts punching in Brendol's number. Her boy, at least, is out. Time to save his.

  
  


*

  
  


They find him at a Wesco in Adrian, less than half a mile from the college. He has a crudely faked driver’s license with the name  _ Mitaka _ on it, a battered white Ford Tempo registered to the same alias, and a 9mm handgun stashed in the gun compartment. He is bone white and shaking and he insists on talking to Leia immediately, so she climbs into her own car and drives an hour and a half to find Hux and his parents waiting for her at the Lenawee County Sheriff’s department, in the Sheriff’s own office.

The first thing Hux does is kick everyone but Leia out. 

He waits until they’re gone before finally leaning in towards Leia, his red hair plastered to his forehead, polo dark around the armpits. His eyes are so dark-circled that they almost look bruised.

It strikes Leia, like a sudden bout of vertigo, that Hux is only eighteen. 

“Tell me you’ve heard from him,” he demands, reaching out and grabbing her wrist with almost alarming strength. “Ben. Tell me --”

“He called Han this morning,” Leia tells him, and sees the blink of his confusion, the furrowing of his brow. Of course, Ben and Han weren’t so close when Ben met Hux. Hux never saw them the way Leia did, when things were easier, when they relied on each other simply and without shame. “He wouldn’t say where he was going, but he’s out, Hux. He’s safe. He and Rey are --”

“Rey?” Shock, first, and then something almost like jealousy. Then Hux’s face crumples; he buries his face in his hands and lets out a strange sobbing laugh. “God,” he says, voice muffled by his palms. “Oh my God.”

Leia glances, askance, at the doorway, where Brendol Hux is staring in at them. He’s so frightened. She never thought she’d see him like this; she never thought she’d care if she did. He spent months gleefully dragging her through the mud, all for the smallest of political gains. Then their sons disappeared, and she lost the energy to hate anyone who wasn’t named Snoke. Now it almost hurts, to see the longing in his eyes. His son so close and so far away.

But Leia has work to do. “Hux,” she says, as gently as she can; he doesn’t look up but he doesn’t shrug her off when she rests a hand on his shoulder. “Who is Rey? Why is she important?”

“She’s not.” Hux looks up at her with glassy, red-rimmed eyes. He’s almost smiling. “She’s not important; she’s just a kid. Four or five, I think. Stepfather’s a bastard. One of those… You know -- the man is leader of the house, women have to be subservient. Rey’s not good at it, gets in trouble a lot. I think that’s what Ben likes in her. He really took her? She’s with him? That’s what he said?”

“You didn’t know?” She’s stalling for time, mostly. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Hux -- well, to be fair, she  _ doesn’t _ trust Hux. He introduced Ben to Snoke; he was along for the ride every step of the way and although she’s starting to realize just how deeply he was in over his head, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s about to tell a boy she barely knows, the son of her political enemy, that her son just committed felony kidnapping. That requires a moment’s thought. 

Hux shakes his head. “I heard him -- I heard him leave the room. He --” Hux bites his lips together, turns away. “He thought I was sleeping. But I wasn’t. I was awake. I heard him leave the room, and then it was quiet for a while, and then I could just hear the car start up, far away. But he didn’t say anything to me about it; I didn’t know he was leaving or anything. I thought -- I  _ hoped _ . But Snoke didn’t want him to trust me anymore. And Snoke always got what he wanted. Well.” A slight sneer. “He used to.”

_ Snoke didn’t want him to trust me anymore.  _ She has a hunch. She acts on it. “How long were you trying to get him out, Hux?” she asks.

“A while.” He admits it sullenly, with ill grace. Still. For Hux, who’d brought Ben into this in the first place, to be the one to try to pull him out again -- Things would have to be bad. They’d have to be very bad. “But Rey. He was with her? You’re  _ sure _ \--”

“A friend of Han’s saw them today, together. Gave them some money. Didn’t ask where they were going. But she’s with him, Hux.”

“Good.” His voice shakes on the word. “Maybe he won’t go back, then. Maybe he’ll… Maybe he’ll stay gone.”

Until that moment, Leia hadn’t even considered the possibility that he wouldn’t. That Snoke might have such a hold on him that Ben wouldn’t be able to break free. “Hux,” she says, trying her best to keep her voice steady. “What happened to the two of you? What did Snoke --”

She almost thinks Hux is going to tell her, just for a second. Then he sighs, shrugs, turns away again. “I think I’ll save that one for the cops,” he says, chin tilted high. 

It’s a poor approximation of the cocky little shit she met a year and a half ago, but she respects him for trying. Respects the way he pulls the remnants of his dignity around him like armor. She’s done the same, or at least she’s tried.

It doesn’t stop her from leaning in to brush a kiss against his temple. He isn’t hers, and she doesn’t really like him, but he’s only eighteen and he's terrified and hurting, and that matters more. “If you need anything,” she says, pulling back, watching the way he blinks at her. Just a kid, really. He's a kid, and he's been through too much already. “Your father has my cell phone number. Day or night, it’s always on. If you need anything, Hux, let me know, okay?”

He stares up at her as she stands, pale blue eyes wide. “If he comes home,” Hux says, and swallows hard, and looks for a moment like he’s going to correct himself. But he doesn’t. “If he comes home,” he says again. “If he doesn’t want to talk to me, or see me, or -- It’s all right. I won’t mind. I understand. But if he does, then… I’d really like to see him again. If that’s all right.”

Of course he’d know how little she liked him. Hux was always clever that way. “Of course it is, Hux,” she says, and lets herself run her fingers through his hair. Ben always leaned into the touch; Hux doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. He doesn’t move, though, and she supposes that’s something. “If I hear from him --”

“Then keep it to yourself,” Hux says, but he sounds sad, not angry. “If he needs to run, let him run. I don’t want to know where he is any more than you do. Not until he’s ready to be found.”

All Leia can do is shake her head. He sounds too much like his father. Children aren’t meant to sound like their parents, not this young. Brendol’s going to be hating himself for this for a long time. “He missed you, you know,” she says, looking down at Hux. “Your father, he was… He was desperate enough to turn to me for help, and I’m sure you know how we feel about each other. If he didn’t find you sooner, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I need you to know that, Hux. He fought for you.”

Hux sets his jaw, turns away, and Leia doesn’t dare push further.

She turns and walks out of the room.

  
  


*

  
  


If she hadn’t already guessed who was on the other end of the phone, the silence that greeted her “Hello?” confirmed it. It’s Han’s phone in her hands, Han’s living room that she’s standing in; Hux wouldn’t call this place. But Ben’s already done it once.

“Hello?” she asks again, just managing to keep her composure, and thinks she hears Ben take a deep breath on the other end.

"I need to talk to Dad.” He’s terrified, desperate; his words tumbling out over each other in his hurry to just get them out, get them said. As if he waits too long, he won’t be able to speak at all. "Please, just -- Just let me talk to him, please, it's important. Please, Mom."

Every nerve in Leia’s body cries out with the need to find him and save him. To bring him home. But she can’t do anything but what he’ll let her. He has already made that abundantly clear. "Okay,” she says, trying to cover just how close she is to tears. "I'll get him for you. Just let me..." She covers up the phone with her hand and turns toward the kitchen, only to find Han already there, waiting for her.

“Ben,” he says, and she nods. 

“It’s bad,” she says, and hands him the phone. 

He stares at her for a long moment, then lifts the phone to his ear. "Ben? What is it? What happened?" He vanishes back into the kitchen. 

Leia doesn’t follow. She wants to, badly, but she doesn’t.

A split second later, her cell phone starts trilling in her pocket. This time, it is Brendol’s number. Like they synchronized it, somehow. Instincts so intertwined after long months together that they’re still moving almost as one.

Her heart drops and her stomach twists, but she takes the call.

“This is Leia.”

No awkward silences for Hux; he’s right to the point. “I need to know if I can trust my father,” he says, voice tight and tense and Leia can almost see Brendol hovering in the background, Lucy at his shoulder, the two of them staring at Hux. His back to them, of course. His focus all on Leia. “I need to -- Please, just tell me. Can I trust him?”

“Absolutely,” Leia says, without hesitation. She’ll have to deal with the fact that she means it sometime further down the road. “However friendly he might have been with Snoke before, that ended the moment you were gone. He didn’t want this to happen. He didn’t give permission. And he would do anything to stop Snoke. Anything at all. We both would.”

“Would you,” Hux says, but it’s thoughtful. Calculating. Considering. Leia can almost feel the plan coming together in his head, and makes a snap decision to join in.

“You trust me,” she says. It isn’t a question. “You trusted me enough to call me. To ask my advice. If you don’t want to talk to your father, talk to me. I’m right here. Believe me, you have my full attention.”

“I --” And then Hux, perversely, hesitates. “I don’t know -- I might be wrong. I might… Maybe I’m just --”

Leia takes a deep breath and plays her trump card. “It’s funny you called,” she says. “I’m at Han’s house, actually, and Ben just called here. Said he needed to talk to Han. He wouldn’t say why, but he was… He was terrified. It’s bad, isn’t it? What Snoke’s done, it’s --”

“He wanted Ben to kill a cop.” Hux’s voice is small, such a small thing. Funny how such a small thing can bring such devastation. Leia clutches the back of Han’s cheap couch to keep from falling over. “I wasn’t sure -- I didn’t  _ know _ if he’d -- I mean, all that stuff he was talking about, starting a war, bringing about the End Times -- You know, it’s ridiculous, right? I didn’t think he meant it. I never thought -- Don’t  _ touch  _ me!" His voice high, sharp, breaking. Leia can almost see the startled look on Brendol or Lucy's face, the outstretched hand trembling in midair. "I told you, I don’t want you to -- ”

“Hux!” 

Heavy breathing on the other side of the line. He doesn’t hang up.

“Hux,” Leia says again, gentler. Trying to smooth out the moment as best she can from a distance. “It’s all right. Don't worry about your parents right now, okay? Leave the room if you have to. They don't have to hear this. It can be just you and me. Focus on me. You trust me, right? You can talk to me. Talk to me, Hux. The police officer. You think Snoke --”

Detroit Free Press. Second section. Bottom right on the front page. Lenawee County Sheriff’s Deputy found by his cruiser. He might’ve been there the day Hux was found, in the station. Leia might have passed him, might have seen --

Hux reads her silence, responds accordingly. “Oh, so you  _ do _ read the paper.” He still sounds on the verge of hysterics. “I didn’t think -- I mean… He was a liar. Snoke, he was a liar, he said -- He said my father -- He said -- But it didn't seem... Dad introduced us. Said he could do big things for me. I could go somewhere, further than Michigan; I thought -- So I didn't -- But I never thought he'd go this far. I never... I mean, my dad loves cops, they're his favorite people, so if he and Snoke were -- Then obviously, he couldn't --”

“It’s all right, Hux.” Don't think about whether Brendol's there, hearing this. Don't care what that's gong to do to him. It's just like any other witness. Take the grief, the rage, the intense need to do something, anything, to unmake this moment -- lock it up. Bury it up deep. Save it for the courtroom. “Hux, listen to me. It’s all right. No one’s angry at you. No one blames you for this. Snoke  _ wanted  _ you to doubt yourself. He wanted you to doubt your father, your mother, me. He wanted to keep you afraid to speak. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”

Silence for several long seconds. Finally, Hux says, “It was Snoke. Not him, I guess, but. One of them. Don’t know who. Not Mitaka, if he’s even still there, but. But it was exactly like he told me to do it. Drive until you see the car, then do something stupid, get pulled over. Shoot as soon as he asks for papers, then leave the body. They found him off 223 just outside Manitou Beach -- I remember driving through Manitou Beach on my way out. The Compound’s not that far. It was Snoke. Snoke had him killed. And he’s going to -- At the funeral, he’s going to --”

Hux’s voice breaks off abruptly.

Before Brendol moved to Northville, he worked with the Lenawee County District Attorney’s office. The first time Leia’d ever faced him was in that courtroom, some poor kid who should’ve been on misdemeanor charges who pissed off the wrong cop and had the book thrown at him for it. He still knows most of the officers over there; that’s how Hux got such preferential treatment when they found him.

_ My dad loves cops.  _

“Kill the police,” Hux says. He sounds dazed, like he’s been struck. “Kill the politicians. Kill the lawyers and the judges and --” 

It’s not his district, anymore, but Brendol never forgets anyone who’s ever helped him. And, too, there’s publicity value in showing up at the right places. Even if they’re funerals.

_ They're his favorite people. _

“He knew,” Hux murmurs, and he’s not talking to Leia now. Not at all. “He knew you were going to be there; he knew; he was going to --  _ Dad _ \--”

A choked sob, and then a banging noise as the phone drops to the floor; Leia hears Brendol’s voice, uncharacteristically soothing and indistinct. She hears, too, Hux sobbing. It takes her a moment or two to realize that it’s time to hang up. 

Phone clutched in her fist, she stands clutching the sofa, barely upright and entirely lost. 

_ It was exactly like he told me to do it. _

It’s incomprehensible. 

Leia has hated Snoke for years, long before Ben went to Cranbrook; she has never forgiven him for skating cleanly away from the Palpatine administration while her own father (awful and selfish and misguided as he was) saw his career, his whole life, crushed in the wreckage. He is everything she has ever stood against -- opportunistic, greedy, possessed of an obscene amount of arrogance. A personality in search of a cult.

But she would never have dreamed this. Even after he took her son and Brendol’s, spirited them away to what Hux so ominously calls “The Compound” -- 

_ He wanted Ben to kill a cop  _ \--

Ben called moments before Hux did.

Phone still tight in her fist, Leia spins on her heel and hurries to the kitchen.

“-- a good person. And, listen, you don’t need to worry about Hux.” Han still has the phone pressed to his ear, one hand covering his face. He’s slumped in a chair at the table; there’s silver in his hair that Leia never noticed before. He looks about a hundred years older than he did when he let Leia in this morning. “He’s already out. He got out the day you did. And the other kids at the Compound are going to be fine. They’ll be fine. Your mom and I, we’ll --”

Leia slumps in the doorway as Han falls silent, listening. It occurs to her that, for all the people who know what Snoke’s done, not a damn one of them has called the police yet.

Han sighs, looking up at Leia. The grief on his face makes everything that much more real. That much worse. "Sure thing, kid," he says. "Look. I don't want you to worry about this. I'm going to take care of it. You might…”

Leia could take care of it. She could take care of it right now. She has no one to console, no one to comfort. Not like Han. Not like Brendol. The phone is in her hand. She should, she  _ must _ \--

“I'll have Maz give you the all-clear when it's over, and you can call me if you want to then. She knows how to reach you, right? That's what she said. If she needs to, she can get a hold of you."

_ Maz. _ He’s still in Michigan. Close, even. But she can’t go to him; she can’t even let herself want it, not right now; she has to keep Han’s promise. She has to lift the phone, she has to call --

“I won't let you down. I promise."

Han still staring straight at her. The bags under his eyes, the lines around them. The exhaustion in his features. He’ll do it himself, of course. If he needs to, if she can’t --

Just as Han hangs up the phone, Leia finally musters the strength to raise hers. She doesn’t bother with 911; Sheriff Statura’s phone number has been in her contacts since Hux reappeared. If Brendol and Lucy are still busy with Hux --

“Leia,” he says, voice tight. “Hey, great timing. I’ve been meaning to tell you -- Jackson County thinks they’ve found it, the Compound that Hux kid mentioned. I’m turning the investigation over to them; I don’t know if you heard, but I’ve got a situation --”

“That’s what I’m calling about,” she says, and watches Han push himself up from the table, slow, heavy. “I know who killed your deputy, Miles. It was the First Order. Ben called my husband; Hux called me. Same story, both kids. Snoke killed your deputy, and he’s planning on doing more violence at the funeral. You need to get in touch with the family, you need to cancel any services they were planning on holding, and then you need to --”

Han leans against the wall next to her, a big hand on her shoulder.

“Wait, wait, slow down.” In the background of the call, Leia hears another ringing phone. Brendol, probably, or Lucy if he’s still busy. “You’re sure? This was Snoke?”

“This was Snoke,” she says. “I’m positive. Drag me in front of whatever judge you need me to. Or Brendol; I'm sure he --"  


She’s cut off by the sound of Miles muffling the phone with his hand. It’d have to be Brendol, then; the only other person on Earth who has his timing is -- 

“Hold that thought,” Miles says, coming back. “Brendol’s driving Hux out now, to give his statement in person. If we need you, I’ll let you know. I’ve gotta -- I’ll be in touch.”

He’s gone in a moment, the phone silent in her ear. She hangs up before the beeping can start, lets herself lean into Han’s warmth just a little bit.

“Now what?” he asks, his heavy hand on her shoulder the only comfort she can feel, and that not very much. It feels like every time she starts to get a handle on things, the bottom drops out all over again.

“I don’t know,” Leia says, and doesn’t fight when he pulls her in against his chest. “I don’t know.”

  
  


*

  
  


“I love you,” Ben says, voice breaking again, and it sounds too much like  _ goodbye _ .

Because it is. Of course it is. Not forever, maybe, but. Close enough. Until Ben decides it’s safe, and that could be years from now. Could be never. 

And Leia is letting it happen. Because the only alternative would be to lie, to trick him, to knowingly let Rey be stolen from his hands and that --

That  _ would  _ be forever. 

He’s too much like her. Too unyielding, too implacable. Just like she could never truly forgive Anakin, he’d never forgive her.

Better to let him go, and hope it kindles enough trust in his heart to bring him back someday..

“I love you too,” she tells him, and feels Han’s hands tighten on her shoulders. He insisted on being here for this, and she let him. He’s been behind her the whole time, hands on her shoulders, carefully combing through her hair. Holding her together with the lightest of touches. 

“Tell Dad --” Ben takes a deep breath, rallying himself. They fought so much, those last few months before Han moved out. Barely spoke afterwards. But Leia knew, she always knew. “Tell him I love him? And I’m -- I’m sorry for what I said, and I -- And I’m really sorry.”

Han knows. Han has already forgiven him for everything. “I will,” Leia says. “Ben. You know he loves you, too.”

“I do,” Ben says, very softly. “I do. I know that. I do.”

As if he’s heard somehow, Han folds forward, the weight of him heavy on Leia’s shoulders, body sagging.

“We love you,” Leia says. “If you need anything at all, Ben. Anything at all. We will always, always be here.”

“I know,” he says -- so lost, so alone -- and the cracks in Leia’s heart spread a little deeper. “I know. I -- I should go, Mom. Sometimes… Sometimes Rey has nightmares. I should make sure she’s okay.”

Hux has nightmares, too. Leia doesn’t know what Ben’s dreams are like. She is, truthfully, afraid to ask. “Okay,” she says, because she refuses to tell him  _ no _ . Refuses to ask him to stay. This is the choice that she’s made. It starts now. “Take good care, all right? I love you.”

“I will. I love you too.” A long pause, and just when Leia thinks it’s over, thinks she should hang up, she hears, “Tell Hux. Tell him… Tell him thank you. For getting me out. And not… Not giving up, I guess.”

“I will,” Leia says, and tries not to think of what Hux will look like when he hears what Ben said, tries not to picture how blotchy his face will become, how red his eyes. “Anything else?”

A sigh. “Just… Go home and get some sleep, okay? Don’t stay in your office all night. Please.”

_ Go tell your mom to go to bed _ , Han would tell him, and Ben always did. And Leia would sigh and complain and ask for  _ five more minutes _ and eventually give in, and let Ben tug her towards the stairs. And he would tuck her in, and sometimes even read her a story, and then she would feign sleep for just long enough for Han to coax Ben into his own bed. Sneak out a little later, stand in the doorway of Ben’s room and watch the two of them -- Ben on his side, curled away from the door, Han’s hand stroking through his hair, the book open on his lap, his deep voice hypnotic in the silence of the room.

It wasn’t every night, of course. It wasn’t nearly as often as it should have been.

She always thought there’d be more time.

“I won’t,” she says. “I promise.”

“Okay,” Ben says, and “Okay,” again. And then finally, horribly, “Bye.”

And he’s gone.

Leia can’t seem to hang up the phone, even when the beeping starts. Han has to peel it away from her face, pull it from her fingers and lay it down on the desk in front of her. He folds around her, arms wrapped loosely around her neck, cheek pressed to her hair.

Ben’s gone. He’s just… gone.

Leia begins to cry.


	2. The Fear of the Lord I Was Given

_ This is where God wants me. This is where I need to be. _

A dark, cramped attic, suffocatingly hot on a mid-August day. The window was boarded up at some point -- shards of light break through cracks in the wood, shining in patches on the wooden floor. No carpet, no furniture, no lightbulbs in the empty sockets. A penitent’s chamber.

The apostates, the ones who fled the First Order before the end and are now coming forward, a few at a time, to talk to the police, have all said the same thing: Ben spent hours in this room. 

With Snoke, of course. Always with Snoke.

"I've never been up here," Hux says, and he almost manages to sound casual. The beam of his flashlight plays over the floor, the walls, the ceiling. "He had an office, for the rest of us. This place was reserved for himself and Kylo. We weren't even allowed up the stairs." Hux glances over at Leia, chin tilted up high even though he's nearly a foot taller than she is. Like if he looks down on her hard enough, she might ignore the fact that he's gone milk-white beneath his freckles, and the flashlight in his hand is shaking dangerously. "I was actually jealous of it, for a little while. Before I started to realize what it was doing to him. To  _ Ben _ ."

There's a pattern to it, to the way Hux switches names. Now Kylo, the name Snoke gave her son, trying to pull him even further from his family; and then  _ Ben _ again, the same peculiar emphasis every time, like Snoke himself is still here, listening.

It wouldn't surprise her much if Hux thought he was. She’s learning more and more every day what Snoke did to him, did to all of them. What he made them believe.  


And Ben, most likely, the worst of all. Singled out, told he was special. Told he could change the world, if he was willing to suffer for it. And so every single day, he came to this room. And he suffered.

Hux wanders over to the window, tucks his fingers around the corner of a board, pulls idly at it. "He saw things up here. At least that's what they told us. He and Snoke would pray, and then Kylo would meditate, go into a trance. And he'd see things."

Seeing in the dark. Leia finds the place where Ben would have knelt, or at least the place that feels best to her, and sinks carefully to her knees. Rests her hands on her thighs just so, closing her eyes. Breathes.

What did he see, up here in the darkness? 

"And he'd tell it all to Snoke, and then Snoke would... I don't know, translate it, I guess, figure out what it meant, and when he had, then he'd give us -- What are you doing?"

There's a clatter as the flashlight hits the floor, and then Hux's hands are pulling at her shoulders, yanking her up to her feet with sudden, desperate strength. "Get up, get up, don't -- _ Please _ don't --"

Leia is briefly, incandescently furious, although she can't say exactly why. She jerks forward out of Hux's grip, rounding on him, hand raised, and then she sees his eyes. Wide, pupils dilated until the color is all but lost, red-rimmed and glassy. The terror in his face snaps her out of... whatever she'd been feeling, reminds her who she is and what she is. 

And what she is is a mother, and for all his posturing, Hux is just a terrified child in a dark place.

And she’s just made that place even darker.

"It's all right," she says, and reaches up to touch his face, feels the wet trace of his tears even as he shudders and tries to make himself taller, too tall for her to reach. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you. It's all right, Hux."

Hux folds his lips thin, presses them tight together like he's trying to keep something sealed inside his throat. He takes in a deep, sniffling breath through his nose, blinks a few more tears free. Leia wipes them away with her fingertips.

Hux trembles like an aspen above her. 

Then he takes a step back, out of reach, tilts his chin up and says, "He had this thing, where whenever anything Snoke said was too hard for him to accept, he'd go and he'd fast. Maybe twelve hours, maybe a day. Never that long. But it got longer and longer the more time he spent up here. And then one day... It must've been when Snoke told him what he'd have to do. That he'd have to kill somebody. Ben was good at hurting himself, but he always struggled when it was someone else's pain. And whenever he struggled, he fasted.

"And this time, he just didn't stop."

Hux turns away, goes back to the window, pale fingers curled around one of the boards. "I kept thinking -- because he was still heading up here every day when Snoke called. Still meeting with him, still praying with him. Snoke had to see what was happening. There was no way he couldn't. But it didn't stop. It didn't change. He wasn't doing anything. Either he truly didn't notice, which went against everything he'd ever claimed to be, or he just didn't care. Either way... Either way.

"So I went to Snoke, in his office of course, and I lied my damn head off. Said Kylo was rambling. Breaking down. Kept telling me he didn't think he could do it, although he wouldn't tell me what 'it' was. Told Snoke I didn't give a damn whether Kylo lived or died, but if he wanted Kylo's mission carried out, he'd better give it to someone stronger. Someone who could actually do it.

"He should've seen right through me." Hux turns back, looks at Leia -- those red-rimmed, furious eyes. " _ You _ would've seen through me. Snoke just fed me some line about how the coming weeks were a forge that would either turn Kylo into his ultimate weapon or destroy him utterly. So I asked what he'd do when Kylo got destroyed, and he just... stared at me.

"Then he told me to send Kylo to him, and made him break his fast, and two days later he enlisted me as backup, in case Kylo failed. Which, by that point, I knew he was going to. I could see it in his eyes. Because I saved him. Because I didn't let him die the way he so clearly wanted to."

Hux rests his forehead against the wooden boards covering the window. Dim as it is, with the flashlight on the floor, shining into a corner, Leia can still see the way his back heaves, rising and falling with his uneven breath. "If I tore these boards down, right now, would that be tampering with a crime scene? Or are they done with this place?"

It took a week of negotiation for Leia and Hux to be allowed into the building. But he needed this; Leia will never entirely know how much. He needed this, and Leia meant to give it to him. It didn’t matter how much it cost her (and God only knows how much this is going to cost -- this dark, stifling room, the image of her son kneeling on that bare floor, starving and pale and  _ suffering _ ). Hux got her son out of this place. Hux is putting his life on hold to make sure Snoke pays for what he’s done. Hux has given everything anyone asked of him and more besides; if she could, Leia would buy him the gasoline to burn the place down with herself. She would hand Hux the match when it was time.

But she can’t.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and Hux’s shoulders slump.

"Doesn't matter," he says, finally. "I got him out. I got him away from Snoke, and now Snoke's in jail, and I beat him. I won."

He shoves himself away from the window, spinning on his heel and stalking back across the room.

Acting on instinct, Leia reaches out to catch Hux by the elbow. He stops, stares down at her hand, then her shoulder, then her forehead, never quite catching her eye. He's on the verge of falling into something; Leia takes a deep breath, gathers her courage, and pushes. "Hux," she says.

He sucks in a sharp, high-pitched gasp and starts shaking, pale hands rising to cover his face as another helpless sob escapes him, and then another, and then another. He doesn't bend low enough for her to hug him the way she'd prefer to, but when she rests her hands on his arms he doesn't shake her off, and she knows she can't expect more from him than that. Not now.

"I hope they tear this place down," he manages, finally, forcing each word out between hiccuping sobs. "I hope... I hope they level it and build a damn golf course on top of it. Condos. I hope -- God I wish I could just burn it down."

"Me too," Leia says, quietly, and when Hux suddenly wraps both arms around her, holding on with all his strength, she's so startled she almost screams.

But she recovers, rubs his back with both hands and never protests that she can barely breathe with the way he's holding her. She doubts the moment will last, anyway. 

But for as long as he wants her, she's here.

  
  


*

  
  


It breaks the week before Thanksgiving.

_ Leia _ breaks the week before Thanksgiving. 

When she realizes Ben's not coming home. When she realizes there's not going to be a happy ending where he runs into her arms and she settles him back in his bedroom with the dark blue walls and the desk and the bed that never got made after he left the last time, clothes still hanging in the closet. He's probably already outgrown them. She may never know how tall he is, in the end. She may never see his face again. May never hear his voice.

There's nothing she can do. 

There's one thing she can do. 

And that's why Luke finds her, the night before Thanksgiving, in a Super 8 in Jackson. She knows Marnie Plutt came back here after she got out of jail. She's not at her old house; that's been torn down. She's not at any of the shelters Leia visited. Leia can't go to the police, for obvious reasons, and the phone book has been less than helpful. But she'll find her. She'll find her.

"No, you won't," Luke says, and she resists the urge to throw the Gideon's Bible from the bedside table at his face. "Leia. Even if you do, what will it help? You've tried to reach her. You're not the only one. Some people are beyond saving."

" _ Anakin _ wasn't," she says, spitting the words in his face, and because Luke is a shithead, he doesn't even do her the courtesy of flinching. "You went to him. After all those years, you went to him, you sat with him --"

"Anakin was dying." He doesn't reach out for her hands, doesn't try to console her -- he knows her better than that, at least. But he doesn't leave. She needs him to leave. "He was afraid and alone and realizing for the first time that he might've left something behind that was more important than his ambition. But I didn't save him, Leia. And that wasn't really why I went there."

"Right." If Luke won't move, she damn well will. She pushes herself up off the bed, paces towards the window. Pitch black out. She hates November. "You went because God called you. Because you felt the Spirit."

Luke sighs heavily, folds his hands in front of him, looks up at her. He's been growing his hair out, lately, and his beard. He probably thinks he looks dignified. Mostly he just looks shaggy. "I went because I needed closure," he says. "Because I needed to forgive him. And yes, I felt God guided me there at the time. And yes, I still feel the same. But that's not --"

There is a heavy glass ashtray on the dresser, even though this is a non-smoking room. Leia wants to hurl it at the wall. "Maybe God called me here," she points out. "It's not just you, you know. It's not just Ben. Maybe this is _ my _ closure. Maybe _ I  _ need to forgive her!"

"You're shouting," Luke says, perversely quiet.

"I'm not --"

"You are." Luke pushes up to his feet, but doesn't approach her, not yet. He's about to, though. Still not too late to throw the ashtray. But this is Luke -- this is the brother she clung to outside the hospital room when they were kicked out, that last night. This is the boy whose bed she shared for the first two years with Bail and Breha, when they still thought Anakin would come back for them. The man she ached for when he was gone at seminary; the man she wept with when he realized he could never be a priest and be true to himself at the same time. The counselor who has always managed to calm her when she was most on edge; the twin who understands her mind better than even she does. She might as well just throw the ashtray in her own face and have done with.

"Leia." One step forward, blue eyes fixed on hers. "Remember when Ben told you that God wanted him to stay with Poe after Shara's death? And you asked me to talk to him, because you were worried?"

"And you said he was  _ fine _ ." They should've known; Luke, of all people, should've known. And now Ben's strange, intense, beautiful faith has been used as a weapon against him, used to turn him into a weapon, and Luke should've seen, Luke should've known --

"I said he was calm." Luke's eyes never leave hers. He takes another step forward. "Like I was, with Anakin. The feeling he described -- the peace, the quiet, the calm. I know that feeling well. You're not calm, Leia."

The ashtray strikes the far wall with an almighty crash and thuds down to the carpet. 

Luke doesn't even blink.

"Was he calm the day he walked away from me?" The smile on his face, the way he waved, like nothing in the world was wrong. "When he went to -- to that bastard, when he was hallucinating in some godawful attic, when he was starving himself, when he was --"

"You already know the answer," Luke tells her. 

The way he hugged her, too long, too tightly, like he was afraid of what was going to happen when he pulled away. The way his smile fell as he turned to go, the movement of his Adam's apple as he swallowed hard. His knuckles white around the handle of his duffle bag. 

It was always his way. The more something frightened him, the more impossible it seemed, the more determined he was to do it.

_ Just like you _ , Bail used to tell her, smiling.  _ He’s just like you. _

Leia would swear Luke was still halfway across the room when she feels herself beginning to collapse, but somehow, miraculously, he's there to catch her before she can hit the ground.

"I want my son," she says, and it hurts coming out, it shreds her throat and makes her eyes sting with tears. "Luke, I want my son back, I want my son, I want --"

They crumple together, his arms tight around her, his beard scratching at her ear, and she sobs into his shoulder, her whole body shaking. 

For once, he doesn't try to say anything. He just holds on.

  
  


*

  
  


(Han breaks two weeks into the trial. Hux is on the stand, skin chalk-white, eyes red-rimmed, voice as clear and strong as his father’s; and Han squeezes Leia’s hand, murmurs, “Don’t follow me. Stay here, with Hux. He needs you,” before quietly slipping away.

(Leia doesn’t follow. Not then, anyway. She lets Han go and keeps her eyes on Hux.

(“And you believed him? When he said that he was having visions, that he was speaking to God, you believed --”

(At 10:17 pm, long after the day’s testimony is over, after Hux has clutched her tight for a long time and then walked away with his parents, suddenly wordless after hours of talking, Leia lets herself into Han’s house. He’s in the kitchen, head in his hands, an open can of Bud Light on the table. It’s warm, has probably been sitting there for hours. 

(Leia pulls Han close, lets him weep into her blouse. When he’s done, she takes him to bed, tucks him in, strokes the hair from his face. Sits with him until he’s finally asleep. Then she goes back to the kitchen, dumps out the beer, does his dishes, and locks up behind her when she leaves.

(She never asks. She doesn’t need to ask. She knows.)

  
  


*

  
  


He finds her outside the courthouse, still trying to work up the nerve to go back inside. She sent Han back in... ages ago, probably. Sent Poe away, too. But Brendol Hux has never really listened to anything she has to say, so she's not entirely surprised when she says, "I don't need a shoulder to cry on," and Brendol just shrugs and holds out a pack of cigarettes.

"I quit," she reminds him, voice sharper now.

"So did I," he says, the Marlboro Lights in his hand still holding steady. "Last February. I was doing so well, too."

She glares at him for five long seconds, and then gives in and draws a cigarette from the pack. He pulls one out for himself, shoves it in his mouth. Lights his first, of course. Bastard.

She takes a deep draw off hers when he finally deigns to offer the lighter, forces herself not to cough around her lungful of smoke. It tastes like bleach, various other chemicals; she can't remember why she honestly used to like the taste of these. Then she lets out a long plume of smoke into the air, takes another drag.

Washing her hands won't get rid of the smell, of course. Han and Poe won't say anything about it, but they'll know, and she'll know. And she'll feel guilty, a little, and probably won't do it again, but it's hard to regret it now. There's something peaceful in the pull of it, breathing in and breathing out. Just brushing up against the edge of something dangerous, trying not to let it sink its claws in too deep. Hopefully.

"If I get hooked on these things again," she says, and Brendol smirks down at her. "I'll crush you in the next election. Anything it takes."

"You'll try," Brendol says, unimpressed. He sighs, breathes smoke, and adds, "Honestly, I don’t know why I’m surprised. Hux said it himself -- Snoke must’ve known that killing a police officer on my old stomping grounds would bring me to the funeral. At best, I’d stand a strong risk of serving as collateral damage. But it’s… different. Knowing he’d have come after us regardless.”

If Leia’s honest with herself, she was surprised, too. And unsettled. Not necessarily because of Snoke’s little list, but because. Well. Because she doesn’t think Snoke would have stopped pushing once he’d gotten Ben and Hux to commit murder the first time. Because she thinks -- and her certainty grows with each day’s testimony -- that he would have asked more of them. More and more and more.

She’s not sure she wants to tell Brendol her theory, though. It wouldn’t give him any comfort. And she doesn’t want comforting from him, not right now. 

“We were coming after him,” Leia reminds him, and takes another drag. It’s slightly less foul this time. Only slightly.

Brendol raises a disbelieving eyebrow at her. “He had our sons, Leia,” he says. “What exactly do you think he expected us to do?”

Leia gives him eyebrow right back. “Exactly what we did,” she says. “We wouldn’t have stopped looking. We wouldn’t have given up. No matter what he made them do, we would have kept coming. Snoke had to have known that from the start. If he wanted to keep them, he’d have to get rid of us.”

Brendol only stares, studying her for a long time. He knows, of course. Knows that Leia’s been picturing the same thing all day, ever since the list first came up. Hux chalk-white with fear, the gun shaking in his hand. Ben, gaunt, with dazed eyes, squinting through the sights. He has, probably, been picturing the same things, or close enough. 

They wouldn’t, of course. Hux and Ben -- they wouldn't. They couldn't. Leia knows that because she knows that in the end, they  _ didn’t.  _ If they had…

But it’s the  _ If _ s that get to her, every time she looks across the courtroom and sees Snoke at the defense table, bald head held high, the faintest smile teasing the corners of his thin mouth. Enjoying, perhaps, how close he came. How far he got before it finally fell apart.

“The nightmares are back,” he says, finally, and goes back to staring at the parking lot. Cars all shining in the sunlight. “Worse, maybe. He still won’t tell me what they are, but. I can guess. I’m sure you can, too.”

Hux was in the courtroom when the list was brought into evidence, of course. He's been there every day. He's in there now, even, straight-backed and straight-faced. Anyone who didn't know him would've thought he was always that peculiar shade of pale. 

He’s in therapy, now, of course. He’s doing better. But he’ll never be the same.

None of them will. 

"Damned shame Snoke didn't do us the favor of leaving the state." Brendol takes another drag off his cigarette, sharp face feral in the bright sunlight. "Indiana or Ohio, maybe. Someplace where there's at least a possibility he'd fry. But no. He had to stay safely in Michigan, where we can feed and house him for the rest of his miserable life. He should be dead now. If anything had happened to Hux, or to your boy for that matter, he _ would _ be dead. Unless you and I killed each other fighting over who got to do the honors."

"No, I'd let you have it." Brendol blinks at her -- it's a rare treat, catching him by surprise like this -- and Leia shrugs. "Someone's got to save your skin when it's all said and done with. And I'm the best defense attorney you know. I beat you often enough."

For once, Brendol doesn't remind her that, in the end, he beat her too. "Fair," he says. "What do you say I go buy a gun, go back in there, see how fast the security guards react?"

It startles a laugh out of Leia, just after she'd taken another drag off that damn Marlboro Light. The smoke goes down wrong, leaves her doubled over and coughing.

Brendol actually places a hand between her shoulder blades, moves it in small circles as Leia keeps wheezing. "Don't die," he says. "I don't actually want to have to kill that bastard, you know. Not in public anyway. I'm too busy to go on trial right now."

Another laugh forces its way out of her seizing lungs, and then she finally manages a good gulp of air, another, then another. "You wouldn't kill Snoke for my sake," she mutters, still not quite ready to straighten up. She fixes her eyes on the cigarette still smoldering on the sidewalk -- must've dropped it when she started coughing. Better that way, really. She doesn't miss it. She doesn't want another, not really.

"I might." He sounds sincere enough that Leia has to straighten up enough to look him in the eye. His expression is alarmingly serious. "Hux keeps telling me how little everyone else understands it, what he's been through. Well, you're the only person who understands what Lucy and I have gone through. You and Han, I suppose. That doesn't make us friends, but it makes you important to me. And Snoke's taken enough. I don't imagine I'll let him take anything else."

He means it. He genuinely means it. "Careful, Brendol," Leia says. "Keep this up and I might start thinking you have a soft side."

It earns her a grin. The truth is, she might kill for him, too. If it ever came to that, which it probably wouldn't. "Don't worry about it," he tells her, and stubs his cigarette out under the toe of his shoe. "I'm sure I'll do something to remind you I'm completely heartless before too long."

"Trust me, I don't need it." She doesn't, at that. She's actually perfectly content to have Brendol as an ally, no matter how tentative. Even if they’re never friends. 

She glances up at him, takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders. "Sure you don't want to grab your gun before we go back inside?" she asks.

Another practiced, laconic shrug. Anyone would think he'd been born with that silver spoon in his mouth, rather than having to forcibly wrest it from the grip of someone who actually had been. It's a delicate art, to fight that hard and make it look like you're not even trying. But Brendol's a man of peculiar gifts. "I'm saving it for the verdict," he says. "Why do it small?"

"Are you going to at least wait until they read it?" she asks. "Or would that take up too much of your valuable time?"

"I suppose I'll see how it feels on the day," Brendol tells her, and offers her his arm. “Leia,” he adds, once she takes it. “Remember. They got out. He didn’t… He didn’t win. And he’s going to go to jail for a very long time; forever if this prosecutor is halfway competent, which he seems to be. And our boys will recover, and Ben will come home. Everything else… Everything else is immaterial. Snoke lost. They won. Remember that.”

“I’m trying,” she says, too worn out to lie, and Brendol sighs and pats at her hand. 

“All right,” he says. “Chin up. Show him what you’re made of.”

From anyone else, it would be condescending. From Brendol, it’s almost comforting. 

They sweep back into the courtroom, heads held high, and when Snoke turns to smirk at her, Leia meets his eyes and doesn’t flinch for a second, her grip on Brendol’s arm tight enough to leave bruises.

  
  


*

  
  


_ Such a bright, promising boy. _

Snoke's parting words echo in her head. Trust him to snatch that small triumph even in the middle of defeat. Leia tries to tell herself it doesn't matter. He's still in prison. He'll be there for the rest of his life. He lost. She won.  


_ I do hope you bring him home someday. _

It doesn't change the fact that Ben's still gone. The First Order is disbanded, Plutt is in prison for the remainder of his natural life, Snoke is starting the same sentence, and Ben is still gone. He may never come home again. Snoke, at least, seems confident that he won't be.

Everything just feels so... hollow.

"Leia." Han is in the kitchen, looming over her, eyes bright and beaming. Leia wonders, briefly, what day it is. It feels like she's been sitting here for such an awfully long time. "Leia!"

She looks up at him. "Don't you knock?" she asks, faintly.

Han, predictable to the last, rolls his eyes. "I'm gonna show you something," he says, digging in his jacket pocket. "I'm going to show you something and then I'm going to take you upstairs and you're going to sleep and for once, Leia, for once, you are not gonna argue with me on this because you look half dead, all right?"

"I'm fine," she says, because she's predictable too, and Han rolls his eyes again and drags a chair close to hers, pulls the cold mug of coffee out of her grip and sets it halfway down the table. 

Then he pulls an envelope out of his pocket and beams at her again. "Trust me," he says, and pulls a photograph out, slides it across the table to her. "I think it'll help."

For a moment, she's not even sure what she's looking at. Her eyes can't seem to focus, or maybe they are and there's just nothing recognizable there. She glances up at Han, who's still watching her, expectant, and then back down at the photo.

It's clearer, this time. A classroom. A young man crouched in front of a little girl in a pink puffy jacket. The boy's hair is dark, shaggy; the girl is wearing a hat that doesn't quite match her coat. Her cheeks are very pink, Leia thinks. She's smiling. The boy is smiling too, his prominent nose crinkled at the top, full lips stretched almost thin.

Ben used to smile like that, although not very often.

_ Ben _ .

Her mouth drops open; her hand touches Ben's face in the picture. She looks up at Han again, sees how wide his smile is. They always looked so alike to her, when they smiled. She'd forgotten. It had been so long. For all three of them.

For a moment, just for a moment, she thinks about touching Han's face like she's touching the picture. Just for a moment.

Then it's back to the photograph, leaning in, like if she tries hard enough she'll just tumble through and be there with him again. He's zipping up the girl's coat, she thinks, staring at his hands. Or unzipping, with her cheeks that pink, rosy from the cold air outside. Taking her to school, maybe. Dropping her off, saying goodbye.  _ Be good. Learn a lot. I love you _ . Because he does -- Leia can see it in his careful hands and his smile and the crinkle of his nose and...

It's Rey.

She doesn't know why it didn't occur to her at first -- too caught up in seeing her son again, in his smile and his hands and that dark hair that so desperately needs a trim. But there's only one little girl who would be there with him, who he would smile at like that. Her name used to be Rey-of-Sunshine Plutt.

In her puffy pink jacket (a little worn-looking, a little too big, almost certainly second-hand), with her hat that doesn't quite match. Smiling at Ben as he unzips her coat, with those careful hands and that beaming smile that looks so much like Han's, the way he used to look at Ben when he was little and Leia's eyes start burning, fill with tears and the picture blurs in front of her and she has to push it away because she doesn't want to risk hurting it. This is it, this is her proof that this pain will someday be worth something, and she's going to need it over and over again as the years go by.

"Hux gave me a picture of Rey," she manages, voice only a little choked; Han's hand still finds her shoulder, thumb digging in to work out a knot. "Only it wasn't even a picture of her. It was another girl, Patience, I think. Or maybe Faith. Rey was just... in the background. But there wasn't anything else. There weren't any pictures of her. Anywhere."

"So you're saying," Han says, "that we should get him a camera for Christmas."

Leia laughs and it comes out wet with tears; she wipes at her eyes with her fingertips. She glances, again, at the photograph on the table. She isn't sure whether she wants to frame it and put it by her bed or carry it in her purse like a talisman. Maybe both. Maybe she'll make copies. "He'd never remember to use it," she says, because he wouldn't, probably. Every disposable camera they ever bought him for every vacation they took went half-filled at best. Anyway, he wouldn't take pictures of himself, not like this. And as much as it means to Leia that Rey has someone who loves her like Ben is capable of loving someone --

Well. She's never met Rey, and Ben is her son, and Leia is, in the end, only human.

Han wraps an arm around her, pulls her close. "Come on," he says. "You need to sleep. I'll hang out, clean up a little bit. How long has it been since you vacuumed? I mean, really. Even I know you need to --"

"Han," she says, and doesn't know what else to say. Doesn't know if it should be "Thank you." Doesn't know if it should be, "You're going to ruin this." What eventually comes out is, "I miss him. Every damn day."

"Me too." He pulls her closer yet, until she's basically tucked against his chest, her face pressed to his neck and his chin resting on her hair, and she lets him. She lets him. Because she's missed him, too.

"You'll be here when I wake up?" she asks. 

Han kisses her hair. "I promise," he tells her. "As long as you want me here. I promise."

It won't be forever, Leia knows that. The crisis will pass and she'll lose herself in work and Han will survive the way he always has, with or without her. 

But she knows, too, that they'll come back to this. Maybe not forever, maybe not permanently, but over and over again. 

It will never be what she wants it to be. It will never be perfect.

She will take what she gets, and she will make the best she can.


	3. A Garden We're Planting Together

He's tall.

Standing on the porch, holding Han's hand every bit as tightly as he's holding hers, it's the first thing Leia can make out. How tall Ben is, how broad his shoulders are, how long his arms and legs. It’s so hard to tell these things from photographs. Now that he’s here, now that he’s really here, it’s different. 

Everything is different.

Ben stands by his truck, turned (she thinks) toward them. Silhouetted against the sunset, she can’t make out his expression, whether he’s happy or sad or terrified or simply overwhelmed. All she knows is that he’s there, turned towards the house, looking at them. Not moving. 

But Leia knows. Of course she knows.

They’ve talked about this moment on the phone a dozen times by now --will the prosecutors want to start preliminary interviews to prepare for the deposition and if so when and will they travel up north to him instead because they’re willing, Ben, if that’s what you want -- 

The decision that he would drive down. Stay at home, with Han and Leia (Han doesn’t live here anymore, but Leia never doubted he’d come back, as desperate as they both are to make up for some lost time). Rey would come. He’d pick her up at school. They would drive. Four, maybe five hours. Depending on the traffic, and the road construction, and if they needed to stop anywhere on the way.

She knew he would come. She took the day off and actually cleaned, fresh sheets in the guest room and in Ben’s old bedroom. Everything dusted and vacuumed, dishes washed and put away. Half-and-half for his coffee, pulp-free orange juice. Bagels from Einstein Brothers and the phone number for Buddy’s added to her contact list. She is ready.

And now he’s here, she is not ready. Not at all. And judging by the way he stands by his truck, door open, staring, neither is he.

Then the passenger side door slips open, and a slim figure drops out -- long skirt, long braid. Rey. She crosses to Ben, takes his arm, says something too soft to be heard. Ben’s head turns in her direction -- stiff, twitchy, startled. 

If he replies, Leia can’t hear it. It’s just the two of them standing by that open door, Rey’s hand gentle on Ben’s arm, Ben tense and trembling under that touch. Finally, Leia hears, “It’s okay. Go.”

Ben still doesn’t move. Any reply he makes is lost in the slamming of the driver’s side door. He sets his shoulders, he reaches out for Rey’s hand, and Rey says, 

“Our bags are still in there.”

Ben’s head hangs; his shoulders tremble in helpless laughter (this is the first sound Leia hears from him, the first that doesn’t come shivering down the telephone lines -- he is  _ laughing _ , embarrassed and overcome and nothing has ever sounded so sweet.)

“It’s all right,” Rey says, louder this time. “Go on. I’ll get the bags; it’s fine.”

“I can --” Ben says, turning back, and then Han is hurrying down the steps, leaving Leia behind, too impatient to wait any longer.

“I’ll help,” he says, quick steps down the path to the driveway, Leia following more slowly in his wake. “I’ll get them. You two go on inside and get settled; your mom was gonna order pizza. Have you eaten? She didn’t think you’d --”

“ _ Dad _ ,” Ben says, laughter still in his voice and something more than that. He is, Leia thinks, just barely afloat. The smallest move could swamp him.

It wouldn’t, necessarily, be a bad thing. He is allowed to feel this. Later, he’ll have to push it aside; later, he’ll have to be stoic, be strong. But for now, he can feel this. He just needs to let himself do it. 

Han stops six inches from Ben, chin tilted up a little bit. Ben’s so tall. He’s grown his hair out, almost to his shoulders. It’s gorgeous, actually, even if Leia misses those ears of his, finally hidden by that thick, dark hair. His cheekbones are a little wider, maybe. His chin not so narrow. There’s no growing into a nose like that, of course, but still there’s something strangely handsome in his face, something that reminds Leia more than a little of Han. 

He’s beautiful.

He’s her son.

He’s  _ right there _ .

“Let me help you,” Han says (sobbing into Leia’s shoulder,  _ I should have been there, I should have  _ helped _ him -- _ ), and Ben’s dark eyes widen, turn glassy with tears. 

Han probably didn’t even realize he wasn’t talking about the damn bags, but it doesn’t matter.

“ _ Dad _ ,” Ben says again, and his face crumples and Han’s hand comes up, just like that, cupping his cheek, fingertips pressed to his temple and thumb just beneath his eye.

“Ben.”

Leia tears her eyes away, glances over at Rey -- she’s stepped quietly to the side, hands clasped in front of her, smiling a little sadly. There’s no one here for her, of course, not the way Leia and Han are here for Ben. Luke was right; some people are beyond saving. Thirteen years later, with her husband and her Supreme Leader still in prison, hopefully never to come out again, Marnie Plutt is still sticking to the lie they gave her, still insisting she never had a daughter.

Leia cannot adopt Rey this late in the game, of course. She can’t replace what Rey never had. Nothing can. But she can do what Ben did; she can offer her something else. It won’t fill the hole, but it’ll help.

She reaches a hand out. “Hello,” she says, softly. “I’m Leia.”

Rey blinks at her, as if surprised to even be greeted. Leia’s seen her face before, of course; Ben has been diligent in sending pictures, one every year. Leia has seen her grow and change, every year taller, her cheeks a little less rounded, her gaze a little more piercing. Tonight she’s rumpled from the long drive, strands of hair falling out of her braid, caught and set ablaze by the sunset. Tired. A little lonely. But she’s holding it together. Brave as she can be, for Ben of course. They’ve been brave for one another for thirteen long years. It’s too late for Leia to step in, but it won’t stop her trying. 

“I’m Rey,” she says, finally, and takes Leia’s hand in hers. 

Next to them, Ben has crumpled into his father’s arms; Han is gripping him tightly. Leia is, surprisingly, not jealous. Or at least, not much. She’s been wanting this moment almost as much as they have, to see them together again. To know that they have each other again. 

She won’t hurry them through it, not yet. Let them take their time.

“They can bring the bags in later,” she decides, and when she tugs on Rey’s hand, Rey follows. “Come on. Let’s give them their moment. Ben says you’re going to U of M this fall?”

“Probably,” Rey says, and only glances back over her shoulder once. Leia doesn’t look back at all, keeps marching forward, knowing her unselfishness will only hold out so long. “Um. Although with this -- Because I did everything under a different name and everything, if we stop… I guess we’re not really sure how that’s gonna work, with my records and everything.”

Leia has been wondering how she would distract herself during this whole ordeal. She knows she’ll have to sit on the sidelines, knows how hard it will be -- already had to do it once, really, during the first trial. It would be easier if she had something to work on, to occupy her mind.

Bullying the trustees into finding a solution for Rey sounds like an ideal place to start.

“It’ll work,” she says, and leads Rey up the steps, onto the porch, and to the front door. “Trust me. I’ll make it work.”

  
  
  


*

  
  


She knew all along that preparing for the deposition would put Ben in a confessional mood. No matter how strictly controlled the process, no matter how tightly the judge decides to seal it (if he decides to seal it at all), some things will slip out. The only way for Ben to control it, even a little, is to get out ahead of the story and tell the truth himself.

And Ben, like Leia, has always needed control.

What she hadn't counted on was how much this first revelation would hurt. How much it would weigh on her, until she can't bear thinking about it and has to find him, has to talk to him.

Has to tell him.

"I wouldn't have seen you as a liability." 

Ben glances up at her from his seat on the couch, all wide dark eyes, long hair hanging in his face. He'd look relaxed if it wasn't for the way his broad fingers tangle together, twisted on themselves. 

"I need you to know that," Leia continues, because it's the truth. It's selfish, because Ben doesn't need to know anything about it, and may not even want to. But Leia has never considered herself a particularly unselfish person. "I never would've thought of you as a liability, Ben, not ever."

For a long moment, he just stares. His eyebrows furrow; his shoulders lift under his t-shirt. He sighs, leans forward. "You never thought of Dad as a liability either," he says, matter-of-fact, and Leia nearly flinches at the memory. "It didn't stop other people from using him against you. And it didn't make anything easier for him."

_ Maybe you never should've married me, then! _ That was always Han's weapon, never hers. No matter how angry she got, no matter how much mud they threw at her, no matter how little it felt like he was helping, she never once wished she hadn't married him. She told herself a thousand times that he didn't regret it either. That he couldn't, not if she didn't.

Then, of course, he left.

"You wanted to help people," Ben continues, voice softer now. "I wanted you to have that chance. And I thought that, if I was gay and people knew, then... Then you'd lose your chance. I didn't want that for you. Or for the people that needed you."

"You needed me," she reminds him, and Ben lets out a huge sigh, shifting sideways on the couch. He doesn't go as far as to pat the cushion next to him, but his point is obvious. Leia almost stays standing just to spite him; she never could stand being condescended to. But he's still staring up at her, dark eyes wide, and he's her son, and she missed him terribly.

She sits, and reaches out, and takes his massive hand in hers.

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way," he says, very softly. "Because it's not... It isn't that I didn't think you loved me. Because I knew you did. And I knew you'd care and you'd try to help me and you'd support me and all those things, but what you need to understand is that I didn't want that then. I didn't -- I don't know. I guess I didn't feel like I deserved it."

It's a punch to the gut. It knocks the wind out of her so sharply that she can't even protest, which she almost thinks might be the point. 

"I'm not saying it right," Ben continues, dark eyes studying her face, watching her intently. For a moment, there's something in his face that reminds her so strongly of Luke. "I don't -- Maybe there's not a right way to say it. I just... I don't know why, but I needed things to hurt, then. I can't explain it. It felt honest, somehow. And Snoke saw that, and he took advantage of that, and... But that wasn't your fault. You couldn't have fixed that by being at home more. I wouldn't have wanted you there. Or Dad, or anyone, really. It's a horrible thing to say but it's true. I don't think you could have saved me. I don't think I wanted to be saved. I'm sorry. But that's how it was."

He says it so calmly. It takes everything Leia has not to scream. She bites it back with effort, swallows down all her tears and all her rage and every impulse shrieking that he was thirteen and thirteen is too young to feel that way, too young to be so hopeless, too young to just give up like that. It wouldn't have helped him then, and now is too late.

Now.

"How is it now, Ben?" she asks, even though she doesn't know if she really wants the answer.

Ben just looks at her with those heartbreak eyes, and sighs again, and lays his head on her shoulder. "I don't know," he admits, finally. "I... But I'm here, right? I'm here. I figure that has to count for something."

It counts for a lot, actually. That he's here, letting them take care of him. Letting them help. Her strange, serious, fiercely independent boy, sitting here with his head on her shoulders and his hand in hers.

"Thank you," she says, and reaches up to comb through his thick, dark hair with her fingers. He wasn't quite bald as an infant, but he was pretty close. Funny how things change. "For being here."

It does something to him; she can't say what it is, but she feels the way he shudders, the way he twists and folds into her, curling closer in a way he hasn't done... Well, since he was that nearly-bald infant, really. He was never a cuddly child. 

He's almost clinging now.

"I remember he said once, before I left, that you wouldn't be able to understand it." His voice is suddenly whisper-soft, very rough. "Not until after things changed, not until -- Well. Not until the world ended, pretty much. And you might understand then, but not before. And if you didn't understand, you'd never forgive me. And you'd never take me back."

She doesn't need to ask if Ben believed it. The tone of his voice tells her everything. Fifteen years old, and he thought he could never come home again. "Oh, Ben."

He wraps around her, so big and yet so small, curling down into himself like he's still worried there won't be room for him any other way. There was always room. There will always be room.

"And then you thank me for coming home," he adds, and lets out a choked hiccup of laughter, and all Leia can do is hold on to him. 

"I love you," she reminds him, and his arms tighten around her; his dark head butts up against her neck, long nose grazing her collarbone. Clinging to her. "I never stopped."

"I didn't either," Ben murmurs. "I never stopped. Even when I knew... Even when Snoke wanted me to think I should. I couldn't make myself stop."

There are days where Leia would happily wring Snoke's neck with her own two hands, if she thought she could get away with it. 

But she can't, and she can't help Ben the way she needs to from a prison cell, and so Snoke draws breath yet.

Life was never really fair.

"I love you," she tells him again. "I always will."

He doesn't answer with words, but he doesn't let go either, curled shamelessly around her like a child.

  
  


*

  
  


"Are you sure you don't want to talk to him?" Leia asks, glancing back through the screen door into Ben's kitchen. He's standing at the counter, chopping a massive yellow onion with quick, sure hands; Rey stands next to him, just out of elbowing range, picking the outer leaves off brussels sprouts. "He's right here. I can give him the phone."

Hux hesitates. Somewhere along the line, he's gotten it into his head that if he talks to Ben, Snoke's lawyers will introduce it as evidence of collusion. Which isn't entirely wrong -- God knows Snoke's lawyers will try anything -- but there are other ways for Ben to get his hands on Hux's testimony. It doesn't matter what they do; if their stories match up, and they will, Snoke will argue it's evidence of conspiracy. Hux's silence won't help them.

But it's the only control he has, and Leia can't blame him for not wanting to give it up.

"It's fine," he says, finally. "Anyway, last time we talked on the phone, neither of us really said anything. I'll see him after the deposition, when I'm up on leave."

Leia had no idea that Ben and Hux had ever talked on the phone; she's still trying to find the most tactful way of asking about it when Hux adds, "But. I'd like to talk to Rey for a moment. If that's all right?"

Nearly thirteen years down the road, Hux is still surprising her. "I'll ask," Leia says, and carries the phone back into the kitchen, carefully smothering it with her hands. "Rey," she says, and Rey looks up from her sprouts. "Hux wants to talk to you for a moment."

Rey stares at her for a moment, then turns to look, uncertain, up at Ben. 

"You're graduating in two days," he reminds her, gently. "He probably just wants to congratulate you. But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"No," Rey says, and gives herself a little shake. "It's fine. I'll just..." She sets her knife down on the cutting board, brushes her hands off on her shorts (it's the first time Leia's seen her without a long skirt on, but then it's the first time Leia's been in their house, the little shelter they made for themselves so long ago), and reaches out for the phone. "Hello?" she says, a little tentative. Then she smiles, laughs, says, "Yeah, I guess I probably do," and "No, it's -- It's good to hear you, too," and pads off down the hallway towards her bedroom, carrying the phone with her. "Oh, thank you. Yeah, valedictorian. I wasn't sure I could, with everything, but --"

Leia watches Ben's back for a few moments, the way he stands straight and tall, listening, before finally taking a deep breath and going back to his onion. She slips in next to him, picking up where Rey left off with the sprouts.

"Where's your dad?" she asks, and Ben shrugs. 

"Out front, getting the grill ready." His knife hits the cutting board over and over again, quick, even slices. It's not the first time Leia's seen him in a kitchen, but it's a small miracle every time. He's so comfortable here. So assured. He finishes with the onion, sweeps the pieces into a bowl, then sets his cutting board down and sighs. "I should've gotten corn. I mean, there's salad, but you know how Dad is. I guess I just forgot how much he hated --"

"Stop it," Leia says, firmly, and nudges him with her elbow. "Your father will eat what you give him, and no matter what he says to you about it, he'll spend the next week telling everyone else what a good cook you are. Trust me. He's just grumbling because he never learned how to have a real conversation."

Ben hums under his breath, but his cheeks turn a little pink. "Anyway," he says, and reaches out for one of the remaining sprouts, neatly slicing off the base before picking it up and plucking off the outer leaves. "How's Hux? He's still in San Diego, right?"

_Last time we talked._ How often do they speak, Ben and Hux? "I think he's in Arizona right now, actually." Leia lets her son take over the sprouts, contents herself with watching him work, tries to puzzle out the best way to get answers without upsetting him. Questions are still delicate things with Ben. They probably always will be. "Cleanup work at an old base or test site or something out there. I told him to watch out for gamma rays, though, don't worry."

Ben grins, and Leia basks in it. He smiles more, up here. He's easier in his skin. "That's the last thing we need," he says. "Hux turning into a giant green monster whenever he gets angry. He'd never be human again." He plucks a few leaves off a sprout, tosses them in the garbage bowl, and then adds, a little softer, "Although I guess he’s settled down a little since then. The last time he called, he was… I don’t know how to say it, exactly. Softer, I guess. Talked about Finn, mostly. Some play he was doing. Said he understood why I couldn’t come, of course, but I kind of thought he was a little annoyed. Maybe that’s why he’s not coming to Rey’s graduation. Since I wasn’t there for Finn, you know."

And Ben is still smiling, casually, like none of this is supposed to be surprising to Leia. That Hux calls him, often enough that Ben knows who Finn is, knows how close he and Hux have become over the years. “No, he’d come if he could,” Leia says. She was so careful to never call Ben, of course, and Hux has been so adamant that they can’t talk now, that she thought -- “For Rey, if not for you. He -- I didn't know he'd been calling you." 

Ben blinks at her. “Once a year,” he says, sounding puzzled. “I mean, not -- It wasn’t like there was one specific date every year that he called me on, but… Every year, he’s called me exactly once. Not this year, though. I thought… I thought you gave him my number, maybe. It seemed like something you’d do, and he always talks about you. How kind you’ve been. I thought…”

"I didn't give him your number." She had it, of course. Copied it off her caller ID the night she gave Ben permission to stay in hiding, memorized it. Just in case. She hadn't thought she'd be able to go thirteen years without using it. Every day was a struggle. "I didn't know about it until just now, actually."

Ben chews on his lower lip, thoughtful. "New Year's Eve was the first time," Ben says. "1999. Because one of Snoke's big things -- you probably heard about it at the trial, but one of his things was that the world was going to end in the year 2000. That it would all start New Year's Day. And me and Hux, and Rey... Probably most of us, to be honest. But it stuck, even when everything else started to fall away. So he called me right before midnight, and we sat and watched, and the world didn't end. It just... kept going."

New Year's Day, 2000. Hux showed up at her front door around 5:30. Leia was awake, of course. She let him in, made him coffee, fed him. He didn’t sit in Ben’s chair, of course. He didn’t rest his head on her shoulder; she didn’t run her fingers through his hair. He didn’t belong to her, not really. But he hugged her when she left, hugged her like he was trying to snap her in half, and she supposed that meant she'd helped somehow.

_ He always talks about you. _

She supposes she must have done something right, then. 

"And here we are," she says, finally. Because it doesn't matter, this secret that Ben and Hux have been keeping. That Hux has spoken to her son once a year for the last thirteen years while she's had nothing. If it's held them together in any way, if it's kept them breathing, that's what matters.   


She'd prefer if it didn't come up during the deposition, just to be on the safe side, but otherwise she's fine. Ben and Hux are still breathing, and she's fine.

Ben glances down at her. Then he sets his knife down and reaches for her hand. "Come on," he says. "I want to show you something."

They only go as far as the back porch, Ben's big hand holding hers, his long fingers intertwined with her small ones. It still baffles her, sometimes -- her little boy, now suddenly so tall. "We only had the one bedroom, that first apartment," Ben says, staring out into his back yard -- the pit he dug out some years ago for bonfires, ringed with enormous stones; the clothesline along the western side of the yard, the prefabricated shed. Beyond the neatly mowed yard is a sea of tall grass, green and gold under the blue sky; at the very border of that is an impenetrable wall of trees. Leia always forgets until she's up here how much this place feels carved out of forest, small islands of civilization in a sea of leafy green, waiting to be reclaimed. 

She'll never see it the way Ben does, of course. For her, this is a refuge from the endless strip malls and flat expanses of freeway, the manicured lawns and grimy streets and coffee shops and burnt-out buildings that make up her corner of the state. For Ben, this is home. 

It's possible, of course, that he's not even seeing it at all. That he's seeing something else entirely, something Leia will never know.

"One bedroom, and one bed, so I usually just slept on the couch." Leia glances up at Ben again, but his eyes are still fixed on the horizon, his mind somewhere else. "New Year's Eve, Rey falls asleep in the living room with me, and I -- I don't know. I wasn't thinking. She didn't seem upset or worried or anything, not like me and Hux, so I scooped her up and put her to bed and went back out to sleep on the couch like usual. And she woke up alone, in her dark room, without me there and she just... She freaked out. Came running out into the living room, woke me up, crying, said she thought I'd been Raptured while she was asleep. 

"And I realized, then, how much Snoke had gotten to her. Because most of her problems... It was Plutt, you know, the things he taught her. But Snoke had gotten to her, too. I hadn't really thought of it until just then.

"So I got her all dressed in her snow pants and everything, and we went outside -- it was still dark, I think it was like five am. 5:30, max. And we looked around at the snow and the lights and everything, and I told her -- 'The world is still here. And so are we.'"

He turns back to her, smiling shyly. "I don't know," he says, and ducks his head. "I guess you just reminded me of that. Just now."

She should say something. She doesn’t know what to say. There are moments like these now, moments where all she can feel is wonder. This is her son. The gawky, angry, aching boy she’d lost so many years ago is this… man. Strong and solid and good.

It just doesn’t seem real.

The screen door slides open; Ben turns, but Leia doesn't need to. Years down the line, she'd still know those footsteps anywhere. "I'm gonna get the chicken on the grill," Han says. "You want me to start those sprouts for you while I'm in the kitchen? It's no trouble."

"It's fine," Ben says, his whole body softening a little, relaxing. "I'll be in in a second."

"Take your time," Han says, and it sounds a lot like  _ I love you _ , at least to Leia's ears.

Judging by the soft sigh Ben lets out as Han retreats back into the kitchen, he heard the same thing.

"I guess," Ben says, after a while. "I guess this isn't a bad way to say goodbye."

She'd almost forgotten. This is the first time she's seen Ben and Rey in the home they made for themselves, and it will be the last time. After Rey's graduation party, they start packing. In a week, they'll be in Leia's house. After that, it'll be Ann Arbor, Ben in an apartment and Rey in the dorms. They might come back up north some day. They might not.

But this is over.

Leia squeezes Ben's hand and rests her head against his shoulder. 

"You're thinking really loudly," Ben says. "You know we would've left anyway. I don't think I could've stayed here with Rey all the way down in Ann Arbor. And obviously she's not letting me that far out of her sight now. She'd worry too much. But even if... It's time to move on, Mom. And, you know, it could be worse. It's been worse. Much worse. But the world didn't end. And neither did we."

He wraps his arm around her, kisses her hair like she was Rey. Her beautiful, brave boy.

"I'm so very proud of you," she murmurs, leaning up against him. "So very, very proud."

For once, he doesn't even argue.

  
  


*

  
  


Luke tells them that Ben is calm, and Leia has to go to sit on the porch for a while and just breathe, because it reminds her of too many things that she can't think about right now. Ben is sixty miles away, in a drab conference room in the Lenawee County Building with Poe, a cadre of lawyers, four or five prison guards, and the man who stole him from Leia fifteen years ago, and the last thing Leia needs to deal with is the idea that this is somehow God's plan. That this was meant to happen.

That's not even what Luke was trying to say -- she knows that, knows Luke. His faith has never been that easy or that uncomplicated. But. Still.

Sometimes, she thinks that if she really did believe in God, she'd be well on her way to hating Him by now. 

Someone slips out through the screen door -- Rey, her long hair in its usual braid, her bare feet just visible beneath her long, jersey-knit skirt. She picks her way with careful steps to the porch swing where Leia's sitting, curls up next to her a hands' breadth away. She doesn't look at Leia when she says, "Please don't tell me it's going to be fine."

"Okay," Leia says, and is rewarded by a brief, sidelong glance from Rey. 

Just that, though, and then Rey's staring straight ahead again, looking out at Leia's freshly mowed lawn (Ben did it yesterday, hair pulled back, cargo shorts and sandals, and he almost looked fourteen again for a moment), the quiet sidewalk and empty street ahead of them. It's not even noon and already the air is sticky, the sky hazy. Another hot day in a summer full of them. 

Rey could be at a beach now, maybe. Maybe not, of course; Ben mentioned something about her working over the summers. An ice cream shop, fresh scoops of Superman or Mint Chip for the tourists. She was saving up for a car of her own. Leia could buy her one right now, if Rey only wanted her to. But she doesn't; she won't. Not for a long time. Leia knows better than to ask.

"They weren't supposed to let Snoke out for the deposition," Rey says, finally. "Everyone said -- Everyone said they weren't going to let him out. That it would just be the lawyers. Not him."

_ Don't be angry _ , Phasma told her, and Leia'd set her jaw, already furious. It didn't matter what Phasma was going to say next; she could already tell from her tone that they'd hit one of many worst-case scenarios. 

"He did the interviews." Rey's tensing up, her voice going tight. "He went to their psychiatrist. He did everything. They weren't supposed to let Snoke out. They were supposed to --"

"It's entirely in character for Judge Almec to want Snoke to have the ability to confront his accuser face-to-face," Leia says, because it's true. She's relied on this tendency herself more than once. "We were hoping we could get him to make an exception based on the circumstances of the case, or at least get the other two judges on the panel to overrule him. It didn’t work. Sometimes it goes that way."

"He didn't care," Rey snaps, hands twisting in the fabric of her skirt. "None of them cared. How am I supposed to believe anything Ben says now is going to change their minds? If they believed him, they would've --"

"Not necessarily." Leia's found that out, too. The hard way. "There’s a difference in believing that everyone, no matter how reprehensible, deserves their full Constitutional protections and in believing anyone, no matter how reprehensible. The judges are being careful. If they aren’t, we could be facing this same situation again in another few years, when Snoke’s lawyer decides to argue that the deposition is invalid because he wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean --"

"But what if it does?" It's not just fury, there. And it's not just pain, although Leia's well aware that Rey is hurting. It's fear, the bone-deep kind. The kind Ben's suffered through since they learned Snoke would be attending the deposition; the kind Hux and the other First Order witnesses struggled with during the original trial. "What if there's another trial, and Ben has to testify, and Hux, and everyone and -- And he still gets out. What do we do then?"

There are a thousand rational responses to this, but none of it will help. Rey's fear is borne of something Leia will never understand, no matter how often people try to explain it to her: what it was like in the First Order compound, how much power Snoke had. Still has, over some of them. 

Marnie Plutt in that tumbledown house in Jackson, waiting for her husband to come back to her, still stubbornly insisting that she doesn't have a daughter.

"We keep going," Leia says, because it's all she has, and the moment the words are out she's expecting it to not be enough, for Rey to explode again. “We just… We keep going, Rey. Because if we stop, he wins. And I know you don’t want that. Any more than I do.”

Rey doesn’t lash out, but she twitches, as though the words have snagged something, some sharp-edged piece of her history that time refuses to smooth down. Her eyes go suspiciously wide and watery. "Remember last year?" she asks, finally. "When the world was supposed to end? And everyone at school was talking about it, and I kept trying to explain why it wasn't gonna happen, and then I'd go home, and I'd be lying in bed, in the darkness, and I kept thinking -- But what if it does? What if it --"

She rubs at her eyes with one hand, wiping away tears.

"It's not going to stop," she says, miserable. "It doesn't matter how long ago everything was. I'm never going to stop thinking -- But what if. What if my mother's right. What if Snoke's right. What if --"

"Rey." It's all Leia can say, all she can say without breaking her promise. It wouldn't be true, anyway; Rey will keep going, keep waking up into a world that still steadfastly refuses to end, keep being reminded that Snoke was wrong. But that won't stop the doubt.

Rey turns to the sound of her name, though, turns and looks at Leia with impossibly sad eyes before abruptly burying her face in Leia's shoulder and bursting into tears.

Leia wraps her arms around Rey, holds her tight and strokes her long braid of hair. "I'm here," she murmurs. "I'm right here."

And Rey chokes on a hiccuping laugh, even as she keeps crying, tears soaking through Leia's blouse. "You sound like him," she manages, and all the breath leaves Leia's body for a long moment.

No need to ask who Rey means. Leia already knows. 

"I'll take that as a compliment," she says, and sets the swing to rocking, swaying back and forth as she strokes Rey's carefully braided hair and murmurs soothing nonsense.

She never once breaks her promise, though. She never once tells Rey it'll be fine.

  
  


*

  
  


The house is silent as Leia makes her way carefully down the stairs, the only light coming from the kitchen, bathing the living room in a dull, yellowish glow. She pauses briefly in the living room, one hand on the back of the sectional; Ben and Rey are curled up near each other on the cushions, covered in two of Maz's old afghans, completely dead to the world. Leia's still a little astonished at how well Ben sleeps these days. He’s still her early riser, probably always will be, but the insomnia seems to have worked its way out of his system. 

It's been harder for Poe.

Leia leaves Ben and Rey to their dreams and slips out the front door, carefully easing it shut behind her. 

Poe's standing at the very edge of the porch, cigarette in his mouth, left hand cupped around the lighter in his right. There's a scratch; for a moment his face is illuminated by the small flame, a reddish glow that only makes the shadows around his eyes darker, the lines around his mouth deeper. Then it's gone; the air is filled with the acrid scent of tobacco and burning paper. He slips the lighter into his pocket, turns to glance at her over his shoulder.

"That bad, huh?" she asks. 

Poe takes a long, deep drag off his cigarette, lets it out slowly. He doesn't smoke anymore, not really. It's just nights like this, when he's been at Ben's side for hours at a stretch, listening and observing and doing his best not to have a single human reaction to anything Ben confesses. Poe knows more about what went on in the First Order compound than nearly anyone; more even than some who were there at the time. Like all knowledge, it's painful. It cuts deep. "You'd be proud of him," he says, staring off at the deserted street. It's not as quiet out here as Ben's little house on the outskirts of Cross Village, but it's quieter than Poe's apartment in Woodbridge. Whether that's good or bad, Leia couldn't say. "He was phenomenal. It was tough, but he kept it together."

"I am proud of him," Leia says, because she has to. Because it's true. She is, and will always be, incredibly proud of her son. But. "But that's not what I was asking. How are you, Poe?"

For just a moment, he looks like the guilty child he used to be. That look used to forgive him a world of sins. It's not getting him out of this. "It'll be fine," he says, and takes another drag.

Leia crosses to his side, a careful distance away, arms folded across her chest. "That doesn't mean it's fine now."

"Look, what do you want me to say?" He's desperate, yes, and frightened, but there's something in Poe in this moment that Leia hardly ever sees. He's angry. "That when Snoke walked in the room, I looked at Ben and for a minute all I could see was -- That kid, you know. When I left. When I left him. All big ears and big feet and --"

"It wasn't your job to protect him from Snoke."

"Yes, it was." He doesn't raise his voice, careful as always to protect Ben from everything he can and from Poe most of all, but God, there's a fury there. "My mom told me, she always told me, Ben's little, you know. He's young. He's going to need me to --"

"That's not what your mother meant and you know that, Poe." It's sterner, probably, than it needs to be, but Shara is still a sore spot for Leia in too many ways. She can't quite allow herself to blame Shara for dying, but she'll never really forgive her for being dead. "Shara was one of the wisest women I ever knew but she couldn't have foreseen this. None of us could have foreseen this. There was never anything you could've done to help him." There is a hard truth lingering at the back of her tongue; Poe will hate her for it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need it. "He wouldn't have let you."

The cigarette in Poe's hand trembles. 

"Just like he didn't let me." Because that's the truth, too, as little as she likes it, and it only seems fair to hurt herself as much as she's hurting Poe. "Or Luke, or Han, or anyone. Because he didn't want help. He didn't think he needed it. He was fifteen and angry, and stubborn, and hurt, and he needed to prove something to himself and anyone who got in his way would've been run over. You couldn't have protected Ben any more than Shara could have protected me, and thank goodness she had the good sense to never try. She knew I would come to her when I was ready. And I did." 

(She doesn't tell Poe that, for the most part, those moments of readiness came long after Shara's death. She doesn't tell Poe about the days she spent sitting on Shara's grave, smoking a cigarette and just talking, talking endlessly about Ben, and how much she missed him, and how she'd wished Shara was there because Shara would've understood the things Leia couldn't, all those questions of faith and God that Leia could never answer. Shara wouldn't have answered them either, of course; answers were not Shara's way. But she would have understood the questioning. She would have been able to help.)

"When Ben was ready, he reached out. And you were there, Poe. And you've been there ever since. We can't fix then. Now is all we have. You know that. That's why you're here. To do now what you couldn't do then."

Poe's posture softens; his head ducks down, his shoulders a little hunched. Even in the dim light, Leia can see the faint quirk of his lips as he says, "Tell the truth. You've been practicing that one."

Leia just shrugs. "Off the cuff. That’s why I’m so damn good at this."

The smile widens, just a fraction, before Poe drops his head low to hide it. When he straightens, it's only to raise the cigarette to his lips again, a deep drag and a long exhale. "Well, if it helps at all," he says, "we've already won this one. Even if Ben's testimony didn't match so well with Hux's, it wouldn't have mattered. Baggano barely cross-examined him on it. It's like he didn't care. Everything he went in-depth on was... personal. Intimate. You know, the stuff I can't tell you about."

Leia's stomach twists; she tries not to let it show. "Discrediting the witness," she says. "I had a feeling that's where he'd go."

"I don't think so." He flicks ash into the rhododendrons. "I don't -- It was the look on Snoke's face that made me realize. Every single time it hurt; every time a question drew blood. That's what he was there for. I think he knows he'll never get out. Honestly, I'm not sure how much time he even has anymore. He's not healthy. Might be dying. So why not orchestrate things so he gets to watch Ben flagellate himself one last time? Do as much damage as he can before the end. I think that's what he wanted. God knows he enjoyed it, anyway."

The worst thing is, Poe might actually be right. It seems plausible enough, anyway. "But you think the appeal will be denied," she says, trying to focus on something mostly positive.

Poe sighs, shrugs, and takes one last drag before crouching down to stub his cigarette out on the side of the porch. "His whole case depends on the idea that Ben's evidence would have somehow exonerated him at trial," he says. He pushes up to his feet, the butt of his cigarette still cupped in his hand. "So, naturally, he spent the whole deposition asking Ben to go into great detail about -- Well. But nothing to do with the actual case. The prophecies, the gun, the car, all of it. They skipped it. It barely mattered. And nothing at all about Rey, because technically Ben did kidnap her, and God knows they could put a terrible spin on that if they wanted to. Or at least try. But they didn’t bother. He stuck to the points he knew would draw blood. The only testimony that could actually make Snoke look like more of a monster than he already did. He won’t get a new appeal. If Phas thought she could make something stick, she’d probably try to bring him up on more charges. It’s… It’s that bad, Leia. It really is."

Hux told her, once, that he thought there was more between Snoke and Ben than even he knew. He wouldn't say what; he never gave specifics if he didn't have them. But the implications were heavy. “I’ll want to kill him,” she says, voice hoarse. “If it does come out. I’ll want to kill him, won’t I?”

"Don’t.” Poe looks at her with black, liquid eyes, entirely sincere. "I want him to live. I want him to live, and I want him to suffer. Isn't that awful? He was so smug, though. So content. So happy, and Ben was so -- And I hate him for that. And I want him to suffer for a very, very long time. Isn’t that terrible?”

"Then we’re both terrible." Leia finally allows herself to slip an arm around Poe's waist, as much for her comfort as his; he leans against her without a moment's hesitation. Affection has always come so easily to him. It's the one thing about asking him to serve as Ben's counsel that made her a little nervous. Ben's always been a little touchy, aloof, and it's been worse since he came home. For all she knows, it's been like this the last thirteen years, since Snoke. All those badly-healed wounds, all that scar tissue. She didn't want Poe to overwhelm him. Apparently, she needn't have worried. Ben's almost as comfortable with Poe as he is with Rey or Han. “What are the odds the deposition will be unsealed?”

Poe sighs. “Fifty-fifty at best,” he says. “Ben was a minor then, but he’s not anymore. And for all the lines Snoke skirted, he was always careful to not cross the wrong ones. I’ve talked to Ben about it, that you might start hearing things about what happened. Things that won't be easy. He says he's already brought some things up. That he'll probably start telling you more, so you can hear it from him. I told him I’d be there if he needed me. Figured you wouldn’t object.”

Poe’s eyes turn challenging. 

Leia would like, very much, to object. To insist on a private conversation with her son. But she won’t, of course. “Whatever he needs,” she says, instead. “You’re his lawyer, not mine. Do whatever’s best for him.”

Poe nods, turns away again, gazing out at the street. 3 a.m. Two hours from now, Poe will be asleep on the couch again and Leia will be in the kitchen, waiting. Hoping. “I don’t regret it, though,” he says, softly. “It’s been hard, and it’s -- I actually had to go to Rabbi Alana with some of it. With permission, of course. I wouldn’t have done it without asking.”

“Of course,” Leia says. And of course, Ben said yes. She can’t imagine how he’s kept his faith up over the years, but it’s never once wavered. And, too, he’s as aware of Poe as Poe is of him, these days. It must have been such a relief for him, to see Poe seek help. 

“But I don’t regret it,” he says again. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat, if I had to. This was my chance to help. I’m glad I did it.”

Leia is glad of it, too. Glad of him. He’s the best of both his parents; she wonders that she ever doubted that her son would be safe in his hands. “Thank you, Poe,” she says. “For being there when I couldn’t.”

His cheek rests on her hair, wordless love. She’s so glad of him.

They stand and watch the night together.

  
  


*

  
  


She hears the footsteps at 4:57, soft on the staircase. 

She smiles to herself, takes another sip of coffee, and then goes back to staring at the brief she isn’t reading. There’s no hope in focusing at all today; the appeals court is supposed to be handing down their decision today and for all she trusts Poe’s assessment of the situation, it’s not the same thing as being sure. She won’t be sure until she hears it from the judges. 

Ben feels the same, obviously, which is why he and Rey are here and not in Ann Arbor. Finn and Poe are coming later; Luke too, probably. Han has been here for days. All of them huddling together, waiting.

4:59. 

Ben pulls up a chair next to hers, sinks into it. His ankles cross, long legs awkwardly bent. He’s too tall to rest his head on her shoulder easily; he rests his cheek on the top of her head instead. 

Leia reaches up to comb her fingers through his thick, dark hair.

“There’s coffee if you want it,” she offers.

“In a little bit,” he mumbles, and sinks more heavily into her.

She doesn’t say anything else -- doesn’t ask how he slept, doesn’t make him talk about the deposition, the appeal, how nervous he is. Words aren’t the point anyway.

The point is that she is his and he is hers, if only for an hour.

The point is that he is home and she is whole.

She closes her eyes, feels the warmth and the weight of him leaning against her, the soft hair sliding through her fingers, and knows. 

Whatever happens next, he is home. And she is whole.

And it’s enough. It’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the Finn thing! I could not find a way of working it in, and I didn't want to leave it unexplained until I finally manage to write either his or Hux's stories because I have no idea how long that is going to take me. So, for the record -- Finn is the son of the Sheriff's Deputy that Plutt murdered on Snoke's orders. Because Hux is, officially, the One Who Turned Snoke In, he was asked to meet with Finn so Finn could thank him. Hux, who had massive guilt issues and an all-consuming need to Do Something, decided he was obliged to act as Finn's deeply strange, prickly, and asocial mentor. He somehow found himself actually liking Finn, and so Finn became Hux's official Second Friend Ever. (Hux is still annoyed by this.)


End file.
